


Washington Park

by cherryroad (summerstorm)



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-23
Updated: 2009-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/cherryroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're walking up Washington Park towards Montlake, where they're meeting some friend of his, when two things happen. One, she asks him what he does for a living. Two, a duck starts swimming, and on the trail it leaves on the surface of the water, Serena notices that it's beginning to drizzle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washington Park

**Author's Note:**

> For [**gracelessheart**](http://gracelessheart.livejournal.com/)'s prompt "storm" in [this meme](http://summerstorm.livejournal.com/322040.html). Other notes: I'm ripping off Garden State here. Also: I don't know what ducks do when it rains. This is indeed relevant to the story.

Serena doesn't know how she's gotten so far into this.

It's not the first time she does something like this. Not the first time she randomly meets a guy and jumps on his bike, or goes clubbing with him, or finds herself half-naked in the backseat of his car. She hasn't done this much since she moved to Seattle, but it's not the first time.

She doesn't trust people irrationally, Eric's totally wrong about that, but she does trust her instincts. And her instincts say that this boy—twenty-something, scruffy, smells like he's been wearing the same shirt for days, like he's just realized he's hit rock bottom and doesn't know how to come back up—they say that this boy deserves her company.

She met him this morning at a small, family-run coffeehouse, and he looked like a lost puppy, like he wouldn't be able to point at the ground.

They're walking up Washington Park towards Montlake, where they're meeting some friend of his, when two things happen.

One, she asks him what he does for a living.

He turns around, hands in his pockets, and his mouth curls into a self-deprecating smile—smirk, maybe—a silent way of snorting at himself. "I'm a," he begins, with a pause for extra undervaluation. "I'm a writer." And he adds, "Sort of," like the point wasn't clear.

Two, a duck starts swimming, and on the trail it leaves on the surface of the water, Serena notices that it's beginning to drizzle.

"How can you be _sort of_ a writer?" she asks. "Do you write?"

"Yeah. Not so much lately, though." He looks ahead, at nothing in particular. She doesn't think his eyes are taking anything in. "Sometimes I feel like I'm fifteen again, like I'm supposed to do everything over. Like I've taken the wrong path and I should go back and build my career again."

"You're not even thirty, there's time."

He chuckles. The way he does makes Serena think he's the kind of person who thinks he's seen everything, who thinks you can't trust anyone. Someone who's read too much and lived too little. It feels like, in this equation, she's not the one supposed to doubt. "It's a very random business."

"But you've been published, right? That opens doors."

"I guess."

"Anything I may have read?" asks Serena. "Don't underestimate me."

"Probably not," he says. "Self-published. Means I know where most of my books are."

"Which is..."

He breathes in, and a drop of rain falls on the bridge of his nose. He wrinkles it, and it moves down to his upper lip. "Brooklyn, New York."

Serena reaches out and clutches his elbow, catches the raindrop on his nose with her index finger, dries it off on her jeans. The drizzle progresses. "I may have seen it," she says, and he's looking at her. Looking like he's amazed, and yeah, Serena gets this, _a lot_, but this boy seems different somehow—like he's actually seeing _her_.

She's still holding his arm.

He snaps out of it and picks up his pace. Her hand slides down to his forearm. "We should walk faster if we want to reach Vanessa's apartment before we get soaked."

"Hey," Serena says, and squeezes his arm. "Hey." She smiles, looks up. "Who says _we_ want that?" She squints, silly reaction to a raindrop reaching her eyelash. She picks it up. "See? It's harmless."

He smiles, a little bit like she's insane, a little bit like he's amused.

"You need to do a dreadcheck," she says.

He frowns, but the smile stays. "A dreadcheck," he repeats.

"Yeah," she says, pursing her lips like she's deep in thought, though she really isn't. She's only thinking this seems like a good day. She's feeling everything else: how she left her jacket in his car when she convinced him to stroll the rest of the way, how the sky seems to start humming when it's about to rain, how the world is grey but it's not a metaphor, the rain, not a metaphor for sadness, but something that feels like life's about to begin. She looks at him. "Can you hear that? Don't tell me you can't hear that."

"Hear what?"

Another duck runs for its life. You'd think it's never rained in Seattle, the way those birds stampede. "The world is saying," and she's trying to keep serious, she is, but she can't help the smile, and it's worth it when he looks at it, "it's saying, Dan Humphrey, why are you so sad and blue?"

"I'm not—"

"It's saying," she says, and she holds his hands, pulls his arms open, looks up so he'll mirror her gaze. "It's saying, hey, Lonely Boy, why don't you color your own infinity?"

He laughs, and she almost bounces, it's such a victory. "I don't think that's what it's saying, but okay."

"What _is_ it saying?"

He frowns at her. His hair is wet, has begun to absorb the water. She feels a trickle down her temples, too, down her shoulders, into her armpits. Her nose feels cold, and she sniffs.

The rain may not be saying anything, but it sure is making noise.

"I think," he starts, "I think it's saying we're stupid for standing here, and we should run or we're gonna catch a cold."

She hits him lightly on the arm. "Is it? I don't think it is." There's thunder, and it starts raining even heavier. She has to raise her voice. "Why would it say that? Why would an abyss tell you not to jump? That's ridiculous."

"And your theory's perfectly sound?" he shouts back.

"Absolutely," she declares, loud. "You're all hunched up like you don't want to let _nature_ slide into you. I'm nature's vessel."

He points out, "That's _terrifying_."

And she laughs, exhilaration washing through her: the fact that she's here instead of somewhere else, the fact that this boy's mouth is open like he's breathing the storm in, and the park is mostly empty, only some people running under ridiculously flowery umbrellas, and she laughs more.

"What's so funny?" he asks, and she hears it far, far away.

"Scream!"

"What?"

She grabs his hand and runs, runs until she finds a place to climb up on.

He runs after her, keeps up, and she turns to him. She looks, trickles of rain starting on his hair, down to his chin. His eyes crinkle around the edges, like he's forgotten to turn them off with his smile.

She swings an arm over his shoulder, holds onto the hair on the side of his neck, and kisses him.

He kisses back. It's the most enthusiastic thing he's done all day.

She pulls away, but holds his hand again. "Come on," she says, and climbs on the bridge walls—stone, wide as her feet are long, safe enough.

"Come up and scream with me," she says, and she's about to scare off the old lady that's walking down the other side of the bridge, but Serena still opens her arms, hopes it doesn't end in a heart attack, looks above, and screams at the top of her lungs.

A few seconds, just about, and Dan's still laughing, still on the deck, and he _has_ to get up with her, scream with her, he just does. She shouts, "Come on, scream with me!", and the rain is falling hard, fast, and Serena's shirt is soaked, but he's still looking at her face like he's entranced. "Climb up, come on!"

And he takes the hand she's holding out, and does.

His scream is long, reverberating, the tension, the doubts coming out. Even when she joins him, she can still hear him underneath, stopping to breathe, focusing on scream and release, scream and release, instead of the cold, the way they're both getting completely soaked, the way they already are.

Eventually, he stops. He rests his back against the blueish metallic post, and turns to Serena. A shiver goes through her—partly the look, partly the way her bra's sticking to her skin. His smile softens, becomes something that Serena's seen before—curiosity, realization—as he pulls her close.

She leans into him, and, this time, she lets him take the first step.

After all, he's the one catching up with his sanity.

*

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